March 28, 2005

Lausanne and Paris

I am in Lausanne to present a paper at EvoMusArt05.
On April 5th I will go to Paris for a week. I am looking for venues to perform as a VJ and also lecture as an artist. I will have with me a special Electric Sheep appliance with 75GB of animation. It's quite a sight. Drop an email to spot at draves dot org if you would like to arrange a public or private event.

March 22, 2005

TV improvement

electric sheep on top again

The #1 and #2 Google results for "electric
sheep" have traded places once again.
Today the top result is my screensaver
and Patrick's amazing e-sheep comix
are #2. The Amazon
page for "Do Androids Dream of
Electric Sheep", the P K Dick novel that
inspired both of us takes #3. The last time I noticed it changed was
November 8th.

In particular I am looking for someone who can draw to contribute icons used to acknowledge the votes. Each is a 256x256 grayscale PNG with transparency,
one is a "happy sheep" for when you vote positive and the other is displayed for negative votes. If you install and run you can see the current icons are just placeholders...

The client has incremental improvements (more shapes, more colors, higher quality, voting works on linux, etc). The biggest change is actually in the server: dean rewrote how frames are reserved to increase performance.

March 18, 2005

Licenses Updated

I updated the license under which my prose, web pages, images, and video are
distributed from version 1.0 to version 2.0 of the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. I still use the Gnu General Public License 2.0 for my software. I look forward to its update to 3.0...

March 17, 2005

Alien vs Predator

I just rented the DVD of Alien vs Predator. Why would I waste any time with the latest action gorefest?
Well rest assured I didn't actually watch the movie, unless you count at 30x fastforward. What was I looking for? Last summer when the movie came out a friend
told me he saw fractal flames in it. And indeed a big flame opens the title sequence. There are many more smaller ones in the ending titles. I'll see if I can get a clip or still.

March 16, 2005

Funding for Startups

Here's an interesting opportunity: Paul Graham's
Summer Founders Program. Paul had a successful startup and has written quite a bit
about what he learned from the experience. Now he's offering seed money in addition to advice.

Filter Differences between FLAM3 and Apophysis

Today I had a chance to look into it. I rendered 8 images using a
genome Heaven 20 from Robert. I ran 4 different filter
settings with each of FLAM3 and Apophysis.

The first pair with oversample 3 and filter radius of 0.2 shows the
difference reported by Robert: the FLAM3 image is grainier.

In the second pair with oversample 3 and filter 1.0 both have low
noise level, but the FLAM3 image is a bit sharper.

In the third pair with oversample 1 and filter 1.0 have similar noise
levels, but again the FLAM3 image is sharper. Comparing them with the
2nd pair you can see the effect of the oversampling in reducing the
staircase on the bright white curves.

The last pair has oversample 1 and filter 0.2 and they look nearly
identical.

So what's happening? The fast answer is yes they differ but
Apophysis is wrong. The filter setting of 0.2 is so narrow that with
oversample 3 it amounts to using only the center one of the nine subpixels.
Ignoring most of your samples makes for more noise. The solution:
use a larger filter!

Why doesn't Apophysis have the same result? I see 3 differences in
the filter code:

When the FLAM3 code was transliterated from C into Pascal to
create Apophysis, a change was introduced into how the filter is
calculated. Instead of being truncated to an integer it was rounded.
Compare the definition of filter_width in Apophysis
and an old
version of FLAM3. This results in Apophysis sometimes using
larger filters and hence producing blurrier images.

FILTER_CUTOFF changed from 2.5 to 1.8 in v1.10 on 3/4/2004 and
this change wasn't picked up by Apophysis. This should be just a
performance optimization (smaller filters with less zeroes).

v1.13 on 3/26/2004 fixed the deficiency where the size of the
filter was truncated to an integer number of subpixels before the
filter weights are calculated. Apophysis didn't pick this one up either.

The bottom line: of all 8 images the one that looks best was rendered
with FLAM3. It also completed about 2x faster than Apophysis. Our
long-range plan is to ditch the apo renderer and have it call a FLAM3
library. In the meantime it wouldn't be hard to update Apophysis and
improve its results. Though I must admit the more I think about it the
more I believe the Right Thing is to rewrite Apophysis in python...

I think it would be reasonable for FLAM3 to print a warning when the
filter radius is "too small". And perhaps to enforce a minimum so
that information is not lost. I'll think about this.

We are pleased to announce that Cloud Factory Collective for the Arts is our
nonprofit fiscal sponsor for the Simnuke Project. This means that cash and
in-kind gifts to support the Simnuke Project are tax deductible. We are now
raising money for our upcoming test and buildout for the project. This
collaboration with Cloud Factory will go a long way in helping us raise the
money and gather the materials we need.

*Donations Needed!*

Please support the Simnuke Project with a tax-deductible donation. Send your
contribution via paypal to donations@cloudfactoryarts.org, earmarked for the
Simnuke Project and include your mailing address so we can send you a thank
you letter for your records. Please contact us at info@simnuke.org if you'd
like to make a donation by other means.

And if there is anyone you know that would be interested in donating to the
project, please pass along the information!

Contact us if you can help with any of these, or for more detailed info on
items needed.

*Upcoming test*

Over the March 26th Easter Weekend, we will be performing our second test in
the southern California desert. We are working fast and furious in
preparation for testing three of the small fans at the same time. You can
see pictures from our first test with one small fan here.

Goals for this test include taking temperature and flow rate readings, fan
placement, documentation (photo and video) to assist with fundraising, and
more. We'll post photos as soon as they are available.

*Gallery exhibition update*

We are still seeking a gallery space to host the Simnuke gallery exhibition.
The goal of this show is to create a venue for art that tells the story of
the Atomic Age. There will be between 10 and 15 artists and 20 - 30 pieces,
space permitting. Around 5 artists will be invited and the rest will be
accepted on the basis of submissions. The medium is unspecified: the nuclear
age itself is the binding theme for the show.

Ideally, we'd have the show up from about July 27th through August 9th
saddling a weekend (so we could do an event). If you have any leads on a
gallery space for this event, please email sasha@mortalspaces.com. And stay
tuned for the call for artist submissions....

*Full project proposal online, and website updated*

The Simnuke website has been updated recently, and if you want to read more
details about the project, the full project proposal is available here.

*Upcoming schedule*

March 26 weekend - second test
April 2 weekend - visit to the Trinity Site in New Mexico, one of the two
days per year the site is open to the public
April 30 - call for artists deadline for submissions (details soon)
Late April / early May - fundraiser

*Get Involved*

Currently our main need is fundraising. If you have any ideas, contacts, or
other prospects for funders, please feel free to send them to us or forward
on our project proposal, linked above.

Also, if you'd like to participate in this project in any way, please let us
know.

March 09, 2005

Love & Bass

March 12th, this Saturday night, good times for a good cause. qak, spaceout, and i on viz.

Jelly's
295 China Basin Way
San Francisco, CA

21+ up
9 pm - 3 pm
Free before 10 pm
$5 before 11 pm
$10 after 11 pm

Join us for a very special night of breakbeat madness to provide help and support for the tsunami victims. ALL PROFITS from the party will be donated to the Unicef Tsunami Relief Fund!

We have brought together the leaders of the SF breakbeat scene, and have an exclusive first time San Francisco appearance by Trigger Sound system residents The Lawgiverz and Kosmik Neil to take your mind and booty to the next level!

We are also providing an ambient/downtempo/glitch outdoor area to explore, with sonic landscapes provided by local sound sculpters and performance artists.

All of the local artists and soundsystems have donated their time and energy to make this happen. BIG UP Everyone involved, the vibe is alive! Addictech throws a party only once in a blue moon... come with us, for The Love and Bass!

March 08, 2005

FLAM3 v2.5 released

100 examples of each of the new variations on each of the images to the right.
Compare to the old sawtooth variation.
I really want this to be the last release before sheep 2.6 is released so please
run it through the wringer! thanks.